The Catholic Patriotic Minute #18: Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli
Catholics For Catholics Special Edition | November 3rd, 2025
Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli: An Ardent Defender of Catholicism
In the nineteenth century, Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli was one of many European, Catholic priests to voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. Their missions included attending to their Catholic flock by administering the Holy Sacraments as well as converting the Native Americans and the Protestants. Not only did Father Mazzuchelli obey God’s calling for Mazzuchelli to go West, but he also truly believed in his purpose to convert souls in this new republic of the United States, which he asserted in his memoirs would become the most powerful nation in the world. But, he would also come to the realization that, if Catholicism became the minority in this republic one day, religious persecution would reign in the United States.
On November 4, 1806, Carlo Gaetano Samuele Mazzuchelli was born in Milan, Italy. Being the sixteenth of seventeen children, Samuel suffered the death of his mother when he was toddler. His father sent six-year-old Samuel to a boarding school in Switzerland, where he discerned to become a Dominican friar. People still wonder how he could have learned of the Dominicans in Switzerland, as there was not a Dominican community there in the early 1800’s. His father was worried about Samuel becoming a priest because of the ongoing religious persecution after the French Revolution but still supported him.
At first, Father Mazzuchelli was not welcomed by those on Mackinac Island, particularly the Protestants. Beginning in the winter of 1831, soon after Father’s arrival, the popular Presbyterian minister, Pastor William Ferry, preached against core Catholic dogmas, such as the Real Presence of Christ, the Supremacy of St. Peter and his successors, and the Holy Sacraments. Pastor Ferry even named the Catholic Church the Church of the Anti-Christ. Father Mazzuchelli decided to attend every one of his lectures. He would sit in the back and take notes. The next Sunday Father Mazzuchelli would preach his counterargument to Pastor Ferry’s lecture to his own flock and he did so fourteen times. He later recounted in his memoirs that these assaults on Catholic teaching happened, “[w]hen the Evil One sees himself in a strait and in danger of losing his dominion over souls, he puts in operation everything to hinder their conversion.” His strong opposition won over several Protestants who converted to Catholicism following these lectures.
During his seminary studies, Brother Samuel learned of the lack and, at times, total absence of priests in sections of the Midwestern United States, specifically in the diocese Cincinnati, Ohio. The bishop of Cincinnati told the seminarians that his diocese was the largest and poorest diocese in the world. In response, Brother Samuel asked to be a part of his mission in the United States. He travelled to New York in 1828, and then two years later, at the age of twenty-three, he was ordained a priest. Father Mazzuchelli’s first assignment was to serve the U.S. settlers and the Native Americans in Mackinac Island, Michigan, and Green Bay, Wisconsin. He would travel between the two. At this time, Father Mazzuchelli was one of two priests in the Great Northwest Territory.
Father Mazzuchelli was not only dedicated to preaching and converting Americans, but he also was set on building churches for them. In his own words, Mazzuchelli “was always [a] mechanic, workman and cleric.” He built his first church, St. John the Evangelist, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Father befriended and instructed the Winnebago and Menominee tribes in and near Green Bay. The natives would teach him how to live in the frontier, out in the wild, like horseback riding and hunting, and he would pray with them in return. Father Mazzuchelli even translated a book of prayers and simple responses for Mass into their language, Ho-Chunk, and published it. He converted several natives from these tribes as well.
In 1835, Father Mazzuchelli was assigned to Dubuque, Illinois, where he built Saint Raphael’s Church, which later became the Cathedral for the Diocese of Dubuque. He also built St. Michael’s Church in Galena, Illinois. But, he did not settle there. He moved westward along the Mississippi River area in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa until 1843, establishing ten more parishes.
Father Mazzuchelli visited Milan in 1843, in order to fundraise for his missionary works. He did so by writing and selling his memoirs of his missionary life in the United States. His purpose behind publishing his memoirs was two-fold, one being that Italians desired to know of the Catholic movement in the States and the other being to write a history of the efforts of the Catholic Church in converting Americans.
When Father Mazzuchelli returned a year later, he formed four more parishes, the last of which was Benton, Wisconsin, where Father would live till his last days. In Benton, he built his last church, St. Patrick’s Church, in 1852. Upon his return from Italy, he also purchased the Sinsinawa Mound with the money he fundraised. There, he founded schools and the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary of the Order of Preachers, known as the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa.
In the winter of 1864, Father traveled to one of his parishioners, who was dying, to administer Last Rites. However, he caught pneumonia and died on February 23, 1854, at the age of fifty-seven. Near him, in his rectory in his last days, was an image of Our Lady of Sorrow. His last words were those of Psalm 84, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts! My soul is longing and yearning for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out to the living God. How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts!” His last words are quite fitting, as he himself built dwelling places, churches, throughout the Midwest to house the Body of Christ. After his death, a penance chain was found around his waist. He must have worn it most of his life, as by the time of his death the chain physically joined with his body. In 1993, Saint Pope John Paul II named Father Mazzuchelli “Venerable.”
In his memoirs, Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli reassured his fellow Catholics that “the liberty of the Catholic Church is preserved inviolable, and under the eyes of the most fanatical is able to erect temples to the Lord, to practise its worship and spread its own doctrines.” He suggested that the Catholic Church in the United States needs to use the weapons of Protestants–the press, education, and preaching–against Protestants, “in order to vanquish error and establish the dominion of Truth.” Further, he warned, if Protestants become the majority as the United States grows into the most powerful nation in the world, “the time will be near when in spite of laws existing regarding liberty of worship, the Church will be subjected even in this Republic to restrictions and probably to persecutions.” In a time where Catholics are persecuted in court rooms, schools, and even in our own churches, let’s pray for the intercession of Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli for a wave of Catholic conversions.
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